1 dresser = 2 projects…

…and a terrible tutorial (if you can even call it that!)
I had a couple questions about the shelves on my living room wall in my Shimmery Fall post, so I decided to do a post about them.
In our first house, we needed a pretty TV stand.  This was before the days of huge flat screens, so we decided to make an antique dresser into a TV armoire.  What does that have to do with my shelves?  Just follow me for a second…


Basically, we took this dresser, and made it into this:

(Yeah, and we had bunny ears, too.)  This was a pretty easy project.  We took out the top four drawers, and just threw a piece of 3/4 inch plywood on the 2nd drawer support. Then, we took a piece of trim that divided the drawers and put that on the front of the plywood.  I hope that made sense.  Apparently I didn’t take pictures when we did this 3 years ago.

The TV stand lives at my parents’ house now.  I looked for a picture, but the only one I could find was an embarrassing one of my sister from last Christmas that shows the TV stand in the background.  I decided not to post it, out of respect for her. :)
So then we had 4 drawers left.  We had the idea to make them into shelves, but the logistics were hard to figure out.
Here are some vague step by step directions.  Again, no pictures, so I’m relying on my terrible memory.
Step 1:  We used the jigsaw to cut the shelves down to 8 or 10 inches deep (can’t remember now.)
Step 2:  We put teeny, tiny supports along the insides to hold up the top shelf.  I can’t remember how we did this…must have glued them because I don’t see any nails on the outside.
Step 3:  Put a thin piece of plywood on top of the supports and nailed it to them.  At this point, we basically had the shelves.  Then we had to hang them.
To hang:
Step 4:  Screw a 1x2 to the wall where you want to hang the shelves.  After it is fastened securely, position your shelf on top of it, and screw it to the ends of the 1x2 so there is now a screw towards the upper-back corner of the shelves.  This is what supports the shelves.  IF we ever take them down again, I’ll take pictures because it’s really hard to explain!
     
 
That was our old house.  Sometimes I miss it.  Especially the white trim, bamboo shades, and simplicity of life pre-farm and pre-baby.  But anyway…here they are today.

I don’t have a mantel, so I rearrange accessories on these shelves like everyone else does on their mantle.  Here’s late last winter’s version (See the turkey?)

If you my tutorial didn’t make sense (I don’t know why it wouldn’t!) just comment and leave me your questions!
I still have 2 more drawers in a shed somewhere…maybe someday I’ll make another set.

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